Eli Hernández of TheEyeWorks Makes Jokes About Dead Two-Year-Olds

I had an exchange this afternoon on Twitter with a local Dallas businessman by the name of Eli Hernández. Eli is the “EVP, Marketing and Public Relations” of TheEyeWorks, an ostensibly web-savvy PR and Marketing firm.

Eli had discovered, several days after the story was hot news incidentally, the topic of the young woman out in Florida who very unfortunately lost her son due to an accidental drowning. I won’t rehash my take on that, as it’s plainly available over at SiliconANGLE (“Social Media Gone Awry: When Mommybloggers Attack”).

I thought I’d just share our conversation here, and then ask a few pertinent questions afterward.

He kicked it off by tweeting out the headline, linking to a CNN source.

I remarked that I felt that the headline was inaccurate.

He responded as I’d expect someone would who only read the headline (as opposed to reading the full story.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt and encouraged him to read the full story.

At this points, our tweets were crossing each other, and it’s hard to see which thread I was responding to. I responded:

He responded with continuing displays of ignorance to what the details of the story were:

I replied:

He ignored that reply and instead tried to pass me off as the ignorant one.

I called him on it:

He resorted to making jokes.

I blocked him.

He confirmed that he did, indeed, enjoy making jokes about women who just lost their two-year-old children to accidental drownings.

Later comments from Eli indicated that he thought this was some sort of fun little “food fight.” I’m sorry, but I don’t consider what happened in this story at all funny or amusing. The thought of losing my son, which is the nightmare
this story conjured up for me, struck me as a real possibility, since no one knows when tragedy could strike.

After my conversation with Eli here, though, I was struck by another thought.

It’s important, particularly if you’re in PR for organizations with moral positions, that you not act immorally online. More specifically, if you’re going to market and publicly represent churches and Christian organizations, it’s probably not a good idea to make fun of women who just lost their two year olds to tragic accidents earlier that week.

I am completely in shock that you decided to turn a personal discussion between two individuals into a slander campaign against TheEyeWorks. Eli was tweeting under his personal account and in no moment did he mention TheEyeWorks. For you to turn around and drag TheEyeWorks and our clients into this is completely unprofessional and uncalled for. I am requesting as CEO of TheEyeWorks that you retract your blog post immediately. Furthermore, we are prepared to bring legal action against you, should any relationship with our clients be compromised due to your tirade.

I hope you seriously reconsider this and make things right by keeping a personal discussion, personal as it should have remained from the beginning.

You definitely have the right to free speech, everyone does, it doesn't mean there are no consequences. It is truly unfortunate that you decided to exercise your right to free speech in this manner, by turning a discussion between 2 individuals into a cheap shot against an organization and its clients.

You are assuming Eli has direct involvement with the clients you handpicked, which is completely inaccurate. These are clients TheEyeWorks has provided services for not related to PR and none are accounts Eli has had direct interaction with. So they are not his clients, as you put it. So technically yes, what you wrote is inaccurate and misleading.

Doesn't matter. He's an EVP at the company. At that level of management, he represents the company, particularly when he's engaging on topics of social media, which is a purported expertise of your organization.